E-M:/ the accident

On Sunday (November 23), one of my 30-something friends, who is
in what I call an early developmental stage of appreciating the
natural world, and myself went over to the campus of Grand Valley
State University in west Michigan. My friend, whose name is Sherryl,
wanted me to see the ravines that thread through the university
property. She

’s a psychology major, currently taking one of the
compulsory science classes, a geology course, and she is also seeking
to understand the technological, scientific labeling of an unfamiliar,
natural world.
We descended into the ravines and begin exploring along the
bottom through the twists of the creek bed. We talked about the
fossils that we found, about soil erosion, and the mineral content of
this area and the rest of what we both knew and thought to share about
what we were looking at. I indicated the deer tracks at our feet and
said that they looked fresh. She asked me about the raccoon tracks
pressed into the soil along the creek edge. Within a half-hour of the
walk’s progress, we startled a deer into flight. My friend, who is
basically a city person, was delighted with seeing the common Michigan
mammal. As we followed the creek, we startled two more deer into
flight up and out of the ravine. We paused a moment to watch them as
they disappeared over the top. I immediately said, when I heard the
loud and sickening smack, that I “hoped the deer had not crossed the
highway.” We looked at each other. “I’ve got to go see what
happened”, I said. “I don’t want to see it flopping around and
suffering,” Sherryl pleaded in response. “Then stay here,” I told
her.
Without any kind of implement to end the animal’s suffering,
there wasn’t much I was going to be able to do if it was still alive,
but I had to see and satisfy myself about the situation. I heard
Sherryl climbing behind me, despite my suggestion that she stay behind
and I thought, “Good.” I beat the drum on this quite a bit, because I
believe that as humans, we constantly disconnect from the tragedies of
the world, particularly from the finalty of death. Distasteful as it
was, she needed to see this and her desire to follow me despite the
fear was a confirmation. I crossed the highway and saw that three
people were looking over a guardrail and down an embankment. I prayed
that they were looking at a dead animal and upon reaching their
location, I could see that the animal’s death was fairly certain. I
scrambled down through the brush and looked to make sure the deer
wasn’t breathing. Its head was thrown back at a skewed angle, the
tongue protuding and I knew that the end had come quickly.
The traffic ceaselessly whizzed above where I stood, as I noted
that the deer’s corpse was settling at my feet. I could barely see
the muscles relaxing. “It looks like paint”, my friend said, “I mean
the blood,” she added. “Are one of you folks going to call this in?,"
I asked the couple and the older man who stood peering down at me.
They had been haggling between themselves as to who did what and when
it was done in regard to the accident. “Oh, yes,” we’ll call it in,
the woman said from behind her sunglasses. I didn’t believe her. The
older man, whose van had apparently grazed the doe again after the
couple hit it, stated that he thought the sheriff’s department was the
authority that they needed to call.
I walked back with Sherryl to the university’s security office
and asked a young man there to call the DNR (or the sheriff’s office)
with information on the accident. Sherryl was concerned about our
culpability in what happened because we startled the deer. “This is
not something that you can control,” I told her. “Deer/car accidents
are very common in Michigan right now because the herd population is
so high. The traffic speed and volume on the highway going past this
school is also very high.” We talked a bit more about esoteric
reasons like higher will and karma, but in the end I said, “The
situation and conditions were right for this to happen. Again, these
are the consequences of having automobiles mixing with a very
successful wildlife species in a highly populated human area of
habitation.”
Obviously, neither one of us had solutions. We have only the
usual suspect list of great big questions that people like us have
when we’re faced with the awful and terrible complexity of human roles
in the world as they exist now. And we like to talk. We felt bad
about the situation and the fate of the deer. In an auto-less world,
it might have been just a couple of women out for a walk, startling
off a pair of animals that could have gone on in safety and we would
not have had to ask any big questions. But on this day, as unwilling
participants, the accident was a statement about an out of balance
world directed at us.